The Siren's Dance. Amber Belldene

assumed you were a meathead, with your…you know…muscles.”

      “Oh, I am.” He knocked his knuckles against his temple. “Total, grade-A prime beef in here. But in my defense, your muscles are impressive too, and I’m not calling you a putz.”

      “Fair enough.”

      He thought he heard a smile in the words, but he was afraid to look and learn he was mistaken. Had she ever been quick to laugh or show pleasure?

      A picture surfaced in his memory. The cover of a tabloid newspaper, the most determined of the three TV ballerinas captured on camera with a broad smile. Months after the show had been cancelled, the news had broken that she’d been having an affair with the married director of the ballet. Sergey had grown furious on the woman’s behalf. Her ambition had made her vulnerable, and a powerful older man had taken advantage.

      His gut tingled with a detective’s hunch, the sort he didn’t like to credit. But still… That ballerina had been the most like Anya of the three.

      He inhaled and braced himself for another tornado before he asked, “Was Demyan your lover?”

      She answered instantly and without a hint of surprise. “He was my teacher. Only that.”

      Sergey didn’t believe her. Maybe it was the sudden hollowness in her otherwise beautiful voice, or the definitive hard stop that invited no further questions on the subject.

      “Then tell me about your death.” He kept his gaze glued to the road as the traffic thickened on the approach into the city. “I read the police reports, but I gather Ivan and Gregor worked a whopper of a cover-up on those.”

      In the corner of his eye, he saw her swivel her head toward him.

      “Weren’t you ever taught some topics are taboo?”

      “In my house it was politics, religion, and my father. Of course, my mother taught me not to ask a woman’s age, or her weight, but she never discouraged me from inquiring about how she died. Would you rather talk about the weather? The leaves have already turned. Fall came early this year.”

      She burst out laughing, a sound so rich and full of those supernatural timbres that it washed him with pleasure. “Oh God, please. I want to talk about anything but autumn leaves. Death, Demyan, anything.”

      Sergey didn’t get the joke, but he loved that he’d made her laugh. In the aftermath, the silence between them felt cleaner and easier.

      Then she spoke. “Gregor did it, but I don’t think he meant to. I remember him calling out for me to stop running, but I’d just heard his brother shoot my parents and then Sonya, and I was too frightened to listen. I jumped into the river.”

      He shook with rage, his jaw clenched, but he managed to bite out a few words, because he needed her to know them. “I hate crooked cops.”

      “Of course you do, puppy.”

      The nickname had grated, but it was beginning to sound almost affectionate.

      “Don’t you?” he asked.

      “I couldn’t care less. For most people, life is misery and then they die. Who cares if people are crooked and miserable, or honest and miserable?”

      “Maybe if less people were crooked, we’d be less miserable.”

      He believed it. At least he really wanted to. He’d often wondered if some secret injustice was at the root of his mother’s delusions. Still, the sentiment did sound naive when spoken to a victim of such blatant exploitation.

      “How about I hold my breath?” she asked. “Oh, right. I don’t have one.”

      A fact he was genuinely beginning to regret, though he chuckled at her joke.

      “What were they like, your parents?”

      She snuffled affectionately. “Like everyone’s parents. Boring, clueless as to what I felt or cared about. But also good and honest. They worked hard, loved each other, and Sonya, and they tried to love me. I just… Well, I’m me.”

      Sergey had met enough troubled kids and desperate parents to be certain hers had loved her more than she’d understood. How sad that they’d all died before she could grow up enough to see it. But if he said so, she’d call him a sugarcoated puppy and roll her eyes at his every future attempt to speak.